Now, these Bay Area teachers — and others across the country who posted requests for help on the popular teacher fundraising site DonorsChoose.org — are going to get all they’ve asked for.

That’s $29 million in library books and computers. Field trips, trombones and microscopes. Backpacks filled with pens and paper.

A high-flying San Francisco cryptocurrency startup company, Ripple, is paying for more than 35,600 classroom requests made on the nonprofit crowdfunding platform — a donation that the host of “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert, announced during his Tuesday night broadcast.

Hours before, Lily Jefferies had no idea her dream of taking a class of public high school students camping in the Grand Canyon was about to come true.

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SF crypto king Ripple gives $29M to DonorsChoose.org

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The science teacher at Coliseum College Preparatory Academy in Oakland had used DonorsChoose.org before, to buy calculators and even pencils. The out-of-state trip was a big ask — more than $4,000 — but she figured there was no harm in trying.

While part of the request for rental cars to drive the students had already been funded by small donors, Jeffries was short $2,300 for food, campsite rentals, gas and other needs.

Many of her environmental science students have never been out of California, she said. She wants to “get them away from their phones, away from Oakland,” and into nature to see geology up close, to study the history of indigenous people.

“The kids keep asking me about it,” she said. But she’s only been able to tell them she doesn’t have the funding yet. On Wednesday, she will have a different answer.

Miguel Gomez plays violin.

Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle

The Ripple funding, the largest single virtual currency gift to a charity, was a guarded secret in the days before the announcement. The idea was to prevent a run on the site, with DonorsChoose.org officials using code names to keep the plan under wraps.

In the past, large donations have funded every request in a single city or even state — including a $1 million donation to cover every California request in 2010. But the total clearing of the site is unprecedented, said DonorsChoose.org founder Charles Best.

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“In 18 years of doing DonorsChoose.org, we have, honestly, honestly, never been this excited,” he said. “I would say it’s the dream coming true, except we never had this dream because it would have been too crazy to even say.”

The cryptocurrency has been converted into dollars, which the nonprofit will use to fulfill the requests, buying the books or sending funding to bus companies for field trips. Teachers don’t receive cash directly, and DonorsChoose.org charges $30 per project and an optional fee of 15 percent to help fund the organization.

Best said the donation started with an email request to Ripple founder Chris Larsen, who had been a supporter of the nonprofit group years earlier.

“I kind of dared myself to send an email pitching an idea 10 times bigger than I’ve ever pitched before,” Best said. “I was almost anxious that they would be offended by the ridiculousness of my ask.”

But at Ripple, which created a blockchain system to transfer currency globally, and which owns the largest share of the cryptocurrency XRP, company executives said the donation reflected the gratitude they had for the teachers in their own lives.

For Monica Long, senior vice president of marketing, that was her 10th-grade world history teacher, who helped her connect the dots between historically significant events and their impact on society.

“Education is definitely an area we really care about, and you can expect from us further investment there,” she said.

On Tuesday morning in East Palo Alto, teacher Sarah Moulder didn’t know what was coming. She zigzagged around the chairs and music stands crowded into her portable classroom, getting ready for the next batch of students, a conductor’s baton pushed into her ponytail so she wouldn’t lose it.

Sarah Moulder with her class at Ravenswood Middle School.

Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle

Moulder, a music teacher at Ravenswood Middle School, is among the die-hard DonorsChoose.org teachers, maintaining a list of supplies for her orchestra and band classes on the site. When something gets funded, she posts another request.

Over the years she’s had dozens of wishes funded, including new saxophone reeds, trombone oil, an electric piano and a plastic skeleton named Dr. Bones, which she uses to demonstrate proper posture and technique.

Her current wish list totals $4,425 — money for a viola, a hand grip to teach cello technique, T-shirts, screen-print supplies to make band uniforms, and software programs for 160 students to help them practice at school and at home.

Moulder has seen about 60 requests funded, totaling $63,000 in support, and said she can’t afford not to ask for donations. At her school, 40 percent of students are considered homeless and 97 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

Every time she gets a package, she said, it’s like Christmas.

“The kids come from very, very, very poor homes,” she said. “I want them to have equal footing.”

Jill Tucker has covered education in California for 18 years, writing stories that range from issues facing Bay Area schools districts to broader national policy debates. Her work has generated changes to state law and spurred political and community action to address local needs.

She is a frequent guest on KQED’s “Newroom" television show and "Forum" radio show. A Bay Area native, Jill earned a master’s degree in journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder and a bachelor’s degree from the UC Santa Barbara. In between, she spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English in Cape Verde, West Africa.